Comment: Just fence it off and charge admission (Score 1) 345
$20 million per entry.
O wait, you gotta send someone there first to build the fences. Doh!
Comment: That'll cut my WoW ping! (Score 1) 262
If they could run TCP over it, that'll greatly reduce the current speed-of-light and no-line-of-sight limitations.
For antipodal locations, it's about 40,075 km round trip (best case) with current technology versus 12,756 km for a direct route.
Comment: ARM by Larry Niven (Score 1) 1244
Sci-Fi/Mystery/Crime
Fist came out in 1975
Hugo Award Nominee
Comment: Your Camera Doesn't Matter (Score 1) 569
So says Ken Rockwell:
Your Camera Doesn't Matter
http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/notcamera.htm
I'd have to agree with him. Many beginners get too caught up with gear. I'm not a "pro" by definition, though I have won photo contests and my work has been published dozens of times. All of my work was done using "cheap", "inferior" cameras.
Comment: Defective by design (Score 1) 150
http://www.defectivebydesign.org/
Mainly covers DRM products, but this sentence from their website is relevant:
These products have been intentionally crippled from the users' perspective, and are therefore "defective by design".
Comment: "Furniture builder" (Score 1) 263
Reminds me of an ex-colleague who said his hobby is "building furniture". I thought "Wow! A real craftsman!" until I found out that his definition of building furniture is buying stuff from Ikea and assembling it.
I didn't have the heard to tell him that his efforts would fall under the "cheap, low-skilled labor" category in third world countries. He seemed genuinely proud of the furniture he "built".
Comment: Probably overlaps with Twitter's list (Score 1) 140
Probably overlaps with:
Twitter's List Of 370 Banned Passwords
http://www.businessinsider.com/twitters-list-of-370-banned-passwords-2009-12
Anyone have the actual Hotmail list?
Comment: Why publicize a Microsoft astroturf campaign? (Score 1) 249
Who TF puts up Windows logos? People paid by Microsoft, that's who.
Comment: Don't even need to buy the whole company (Score 1) 472
That's an intriguing idea, and they wouldn't even have to buy the whole company. Plus, they could just use their personal money, and not Google's.
For instance, Vivendi, the parent company of Universal (the largest record label) has a market cap of $25.1 bil; 10% of that is "only" $250 mil. Warner Music has a market cap of only $1.1 bil.
Here's how I'd do it:
1) Buy a 10% stake in the "big four" labels right now.
2) Every month, for the next two years, buy another %1 stake in the labels.
3) Do not negotiate or meet with the labels at all.
4) Attend all shareholder meetings at the labels, but remain silent.
They'll eventually get the message.
Comment: Isn't 99.8 an FM radio frequency? (Score 1) 466
Not sure if he wrote 99.8H or 99.84. It might be an FM radio station.
Here's a list of MO radio stations:
http://www.ontheradio.net/states/missouri.aspx
Flash Can Rob 2 Hours From MacBook Air's Battery Life 509
Posted
by
timothy
from the less-frantic-scrambling dept.
from the less-frantic-scrambling dept.
The lack of Flash in the new MacBook Air may annoy some users, but it has a big upside, too. According to Wired's report (citing Ars Technica) passed on by an anonymous reader, "Having Flash installed can cut battery runtime considerably — as much as 33 percent in our testing. With a handful of websites loaded in Safari, Flash-based ads kept the CPU running far more than seemed necessary, and the best time I recorded with Flash installed was just 4 hours. After deleting Flash, however, the MacBook Air ran for 6:02 — with the exact same set of websites reloaded in Safari, and with static ads replacing the CPU-sucking Flash versions."
Chatbot Suzette Wins 20th Annual Loebner Prize, Fools One Judge 257
Posted
by
timothy
from the holy-crepes-suzette dept.
from the holy-crepes-suzette dept.
skwilcox writes "From Wikipedia: 'The Loebner Prize is an annual competition in artificial intelligence that awards prizes to the chatterbot considered by the judges to be the most human-like. The format of the competition is that of a standard Turing test. A human judge poses text questions to a computer program and a human being via computer. Based upon the answers, the judge must decide which is which.' My chatbot, Suzette, won this year's Loebner and even confused a judge into voting for her over a human (or should I say he confused himself). Here is the blow-by-blow of this weird event." Read on below for the rest; this sounds like it would have been a fun competition to watch.
Comment: Just block the social game servers (Score 2, Interesting) 130
Can't you just block the servers used by Facebook games? e.g. Zynga, Mindjolt, etc. The domains and IP ranges should be easy to track down.
That should eliminate a major time sink, while still allowing access to FB messages, events, groups, etc which could possibly be used for work.
But really, if you've got someone playing Farmville 6+ hours a day at work, then it is an employee problem, not a security problem...
Ig Nobel prize winner wins real Nobel Prize->
Submitted
by
Leemeng
Leemeng writes "Andrei Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, both at Manchester University, UK, took this year's Nobel Prize for Physics for their research on graphene. Geim was one of the recipients of 2000 Ig Nobel Prize in physics, which he earned for magnetically levitating frogs. This makes Geim the first person to have won both the Ig Nobel and the Nobel Prizes."
Link to Original Source
Link to Original Source
Romania Now Taking Donations
23
Posted
by
samzenpus
from the help-a-country-down-on-its-luck dept.
from the help-a-country-down-on-its-luck dept.
The Romanian government is taking an unusual approach to fixing its economic problems; it has created a donation box. Everyone except legal entities can donate money to the newly formed "solidarity fund." From the article: "Officials said the new fund is aimed at public officials who earn additional income on top of regular wages by serving on administrative boards of companies entirely or partially owned by the state. Prime Minister Emil Boc has also said he will donate his wages to the fund, but the account is open to anyone who wishes to contribute. Donations can be made by bank transfer to a special account and a list of donations will subsequently be published on the ministry's website."